Show HN: I suck at remembering names, so I built an app to help

by tomasien • 13 years ago

59 64 13 years ago

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Tommy - creator here. I'd love any ideas about how the app can help you exchange and remember names better - but to start, it indexes by Time and by Location, so you if you remember where and/or when you met somebody, this can help you remember them!

I built it for myself, but some friends helped me make it into something anyone can use. Looking forward to the feedback!

ANDROID USERS - if you like the concept id love to hear from you, if it seems people want it I'd love to make an Android version

taeric• 13 years ago

Quiz game. Put up a picture of the person, and see if I can get their name.

janjongboom• 13 years ago

Adding a photo of business card to go with it plus a small note?

At the moment I scribble on his/her business card why a person I meet is important and send a follow up later based on that info.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Photos were a little to high-input for me to implement in the first version - wanted to give people something stupid simple, but finding a way to get photos in there without a lot of effort by the user (taking a picture of someone you just met is weird) would be amazing.

CraigJPerry• 13 years ago

I just switched to an Android phone so apologies if this is old news, but as i make a call to people it pops up their last Facebook status on the dialer screen.

I can appreciate this may sound like a total waste of time but i've been grateful of it so many times now!

The effect is almost like my phone could read my mind and it's saying something like "ohh, you're going to talk to so-and-so? Well here's something current to talk about!"

InAnEmergency• 13 years ago

For a long time my friend's last Facebook status was that his dog had died. Really depressing.

cedsav• 13 years ago

Just installed it and gave it a quick spin. My first issue is that I can't change the location beyond the local area, so I can't add people that I met a couple days ago in a different city. I understand that ideally, you want to add people right away while you remember their name, but in practice I'm not going to pull my phone right after we've been introduced.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Yeah I agree that's a problem.

wodenokoto2• 13 years ago

This app is great. It doesn't support the phonetic spelling fields, though. It also needs email and note fields. When clicking a contact from the left-hand menu, it doesn't show the location. So there is lot's of room for development, but this start is sleek and extremely handy! I have already paid for an app that only does half of this one, and I am willing to pay again to get a fuller set of features!

My personal hack for helping remember people is I use the company field as a tag. So people I meet in a bar will get the bar name in that field, people from school will get the school name, people from work, will get work name, clubs etc.

The nice thing about this is you can search for company name, so I can just type in "study group" and I get all the contacts in my study group up as a result.

kylelibra• 13 years ago

Rapportive is another app that people might find useful if they have this sort of problem. It is a plugin for gmail that pulls in social media profiles to attach a name to a face when emailing with someone.

http://rapportive.com/

henryaj2• 13 years ago

Damn. I was thinking of building something like this! (More specifically, I imagined the UI flow would involve getting the person to take a photo of themselves.)

Seriously, this is a great idea.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Thanks I really hope you keep sending feedback as you use it!

reddit_clone• 13 years ago

It may all be moot when(if) Google glass get popular.

I expect an info-bubble will appear when you see someone through the glasses and tilt your head in an inquiring manner.

Etab• 13 years ago

Nice work.

My first reaction was, "Huh? Why not just use your phone's built-in Contacts?"

But then thinking about it for a minute and watching the very helpful video demo on the homepage...

I like how you can open the app and start entering info. Much better than fiddling through Phone or Contacts app. Really nice touch on including the location.

Seriously -- good job, Tommy!

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Hey thanks! I'm sure a lot of people will have the same initial reaction - it's a very simple app that does, what I thin are, some very powerful things.

chromaton• 13 years ago

My current system is a plain text file that I can open with one tap on my phone's home screen. I started keeping track of the people I met after reading How to Win Friends and Influence People.

This might be a step up, thanks!

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Hope it helps you out!

jlsync• 13 years ago

I've got the same problem, the app I built http://Big.first.name/

tomasien22• 13 years ago

A different side of the same problem!

jonaldomo• 13 years ago

I love the screencast on the site. Is there a tool you used to get that going?

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Is there ever! I used Reflector to mirror onto my screen, Quicktime to screen record my laptop, then MPEG Streamclip to crop it, then an online converter to convert to OGV for Firefox!

Brajeshwar• 13 years ago

Other good apps doing somewhat similar stuffs;

* http://evernote.com/hello/

* http://www.refresh.io/

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Evernote Hello was my inspiration for this actually! I really, really disliked it very, very much and I'm a big Evernote fan. It needs to be simpler, IMO - I want to drive user input toward 0 if I can, let the app do the work.

Thanks for sharing! I haven't seen refresh.io

jasonlotito• 13 years ago

Just want to back up your statement. Evernote Hello is one of those "Wow, that's awesome to look at" but was painful to use. To much work and effort for what needs to be a fast and simple thing.

dalore3• 13 years ago

I had an idea for a similar app, perhaps you can incorporate my idea into yours. My idea was when you write down their name, it also saves the available wifi mac addresses it sees in the vicinity. Then when you see someone again somewhere else you can look at the app for names that might be them (based on the visibility of wifi mac addresses).

The theory is that people carry a phone on them that is unique and is often in wifi mode trying to make a connection which broadcasts the mac. So when you record a contact, one of the visible mac address might be them. In a new place it sees what mac addresses are around and loads up your contact list based on what addresses were visible at the time.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

I'm not sure I follow - what information would the wifi signals nearby where you met them give you? Or would it be that hopefully they have their phone again when you see them, and it will know who they are that way?

dalore3• 13 years ago

Most people will have their phone with them. So the app will use the id's it can currently see vs the one it saw when it recorded the contacts it will cross reference and show you possible contacts.

marknutter• 13 years ago

The best way to remember people's names doesn't require an app or any technology to speak of. When you meet someone, key in on their most unique, memorable physical feature or personality quirk. Come up with a quick story or catch phrase that revolves around that feature. The weirder the feature and the story, the more likely you are to remember their name.

For instance, you meet John. John's eyes seem like their closer together than most people's eyes are. So you could say to yourself "John, John, stared at his nose for too long". Every time you see John and his funny close-together eyes, you'll remember the story you made up and thus remember his name.

Once you get good at this you'll never forget another person's name. It works like a charm. I find it helps to make the stories especially strange or even offensive. The more of a caricature you can create in your mind about them the better. Just don't accidentally say what you're thinking out loud :)

IanCal• 13 years ago

For instance, you meet John. John's eyes seem like

By the start of the second sentence I've already forgotten the name.

nsxwolf• 13 years ago

This is my problem too. When someone introduces themselves to me, I can feel their name slipping out of my brain seemingly before they've even finished saying it.

An app would not help me. "Hello, I'm..." "Wait! Hang on! Let me launch this app... ok, go ahead!"

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback! Pneumonic devices are really helpful when you remember to use them, but I think one of the core tenants of modern computing is the ability to more efficiently offload tasks. If I and everyone I know has gone our entire lives being terrible at remembering names, I think "actually, remembering names is easy" may not be the most effective mantra at this point.

Edit: changed "efficacious" to "effective" because oh my god why did I use that word.

GrinningFool• 13 years ago

Two thoughts on this (disclaimer: I don't have ios so I wasn't able to download the app - this is based on the screenshots and description):

1) I think there's a strong case to be made that says spending 10 seconds thinking up a story is much more efficient than stopping a conversation, opening an app, and typing in details on a touchscreen.

2) if we offload everything, what are we saving? Assuming it takes just as long to make up a quirky story as to tap in someone's details[1] what have you saved, except possibility the opportunity to exercise mental skills otherwise falling into disuse?

IOW: If we offload everything, we become glorified mental button pushers.

---- The landing page is actually well done - simple, to the point shows and tells me what it's about without a ton of wasted space.

That said: it looks like a lot of steps; and it doesn't give you any way to associate the face. Seems like you come away with a list of people you've met in reverse chronological order, but nothing that really says "This person I see before me now is Hermione".

[1] ... while they patiently avoid looking at you as you fiddle with your phone ...

tobych• 13 years ago

Mnemonic. :-)

cb33• 13 years ago

This method reminds me of Michael Scott's "trick" to remembering names. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQfW1G6Me5E

wodenokoto2• 13 years ago

Except that doesn't work for:

* 100's of people over long timespans.

* Remembering what that person you met at the bar last night was called.

Figuring out who "insert random name you stumbled upon in your phonebook" is.

Modern humans have networks way bigger than we can handle in just our mind and we need written records (contact books, diaries, letters, business cards, whatever) in order to be able to handle large quantities of data, such as these social and professional networks we tend to keep.

adamconroy• 13 years ago

Ditto. And ditto about being careful not to let your quirky mnemonic slip. My wife and I met a couple at a party a while ago, then met them 6 months later at another party. My wife quickly asked me if I remembered their names and I said, yeh Quiche Lorraine and Brad pitt (their names are Lorraine and Brad). Of course we then met them again another 6 months later and my wife having had a few drinks let blurt, 'hey, its quiche lorraine'

networked2• 13 years ago

Good idea. Do make an Android version! Also consider letting the user add photos and custom fields to contacts (those could range from "research interests" to "hair color" to "college class" to "favorite drink" and so on), not just an unstructured, unsearchable mess called "notes". If you do decide to support custom fields do not force every contact to have every kind of field.

However, (and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say this) what I'm really waiting for is the obvious "ultimate" solution to this problem: an augmented reality device and app combo that would show people's names hovering above their heads. Making the names "glanceable" would make a huge difference and there would be potential for a lot for extensions. Add research/technological interests in highly visible large letters and conferences suddenly get a lot more interesting; add "going to <city name>" and it's a hitchhiking app; add "single" and it's a dating app (use at your own peril); add selectable multilingual subtitles (e.g., at an official speech) and it's a live translation app, etc.

I wonder if this could somehow be made viable without advanced augmented reality glasses.

sillysaurus2• 13 years ago

an augmented reality device and app combo that would show people's names hovering above their heads.

Being able to tag people with whatever phrase you wanted would be hilarious.

networked2• 13 years ago

For a darker turn add a friend or foe identification system to that and it could become very useful for all sorts of gang activities.

theboss2• 13 years ago

Wait? These are TheCitySwig guys? Just to let you know your last website was so horribly insecure. It was like a whois who of Owasp Top 10 issues. Just letting you know in case you build something like that again...

On topic of WeHighFive, I think it is a stupid idea. Takes one more step away from the paradigm of 'face-to-face' communication.

At the very best, you're saving 30 seconds of time writing the text message, and wasting 3 minutes looking through all the texts you have to remember the person's name.

Either ask the person their name again or say it a couple times in your head when you first meet them. With your app, when I re-meet someone, I have to look at my phone and figure out who they are again.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

I'm sure it was our security issues that sunk us. Thanks for the feedback.

ScottWhigham• 13 years ago

Downvoted for the unnecessary negativity x2. Fine, you think it's a stupid idea - just move on and close the tab then. Your opinion is just that: one person's opinion. If you want to offer the guy feedback on his app, go for it. But there's just no need to comment on HN on every app/idea you don't like/hate/think-is-stupid with "I think it is a stupid idea." Surely you have better ways to spend your time (as do I).

theboss2• 13 years ago

Ha. Thanks.

Isn't the point of this to save time or remember someone's name. Actually think about how your interaction with another person would go and how this app fits into that....It makes the interaction awkward and you probably won't even find their text message in time (your messages screen is a most recently used list...the message will be buried).

Where is the plus side? I think the idea is stupid. If they like they are free to prove me wrong and show me it is a good idea.

edit: I think sugar coating opinions so they have to be positive is pointless. Maybe me saying the app is stupid helps them realize some problem with their app that helps them improve it and make it much better (and then prove me wrong).

If we were to Sugar coat all feedback then the feedback of horrible products will be indistinguishable from good products which makes it pointless.

speedyrev• 13 years ago

How about a text field that allows you to write something about them. "Dude with weird hair, works for Widgets Inc. Said he was divorced but had a daughter in college." Then make that info available when he calls me.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Love it. Almost put that in there for the first version, but we were intent on making this MVP

acallwood• 13 years ago

I think Speedyrev2 hit it on the head. A notes section makes too much sense. "Cute girl, bitchy freind, etc etc". That functionality makes it even more interesting than it already is.

msane• 13 years ago

How does it work? I'm reluctant to click to try it out because the mobile page didn't explain enough about it / don't know what I would be getting.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

You add contacts to your phone and it adds them based on where you met them and when you met them. You can also send a really easy text back to them with your information auto-populated.

Then, if you remember where or when you met somebody, you can more efficiently remember their names! Check out the non-mobile site, it has a really quick video that shows it.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Hey whoa - did this get flagged and booted from the front page? Any reason?

rafaelordaz• 13 years ago

I like the simplicity of the app, just the right number of field. I couldn't find a suitable name for the location I was. Can I edit the location name? Where is the app getting the location names? (Maps, Google Maps, foursquare?)

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Foursquare. I'm going to add a field where you can just make a new location on the spot so you can call it anything you want - "Joe's Party" for instance. Whatever would be helpful for you. That'll be at least one of and possibly the only thing in the next update.

tomasien22• 13 years ago

Did this just get UN-flagged? It's back on the front page now. Anyone ever see this happen before? That's pretty weird in my experience.

discardorama• 13 years ago

I used to be bad at names. Now I've become somewhat better. What's helped is: when I hear their name, I say it back to them: once loud (as in, "Hi John! Nice to meet you."), and several times after that in my mind ("that's John, I just met him"). I'll revisit his name a few times with increasing delays in between, and after a couple of iterations, it's baked in.

Another thing that helps: if you notice something weird, latch on to it immediately. It could be anything: something he's wearing or about his voice or his looks (a guy I met recently had a Facebook style t-shirt with a thumbs down and "meh" instead of the 'like'; I made a note of it, and now, even a couple of weeks later, associate him with that t-shirt). These techniques have helped me remember names of up to 20-25 new people in a night of socializing.

purplelobster• 13 years ago

Spaced repetition at work. Works great for me too, whenever I actually remember to do that, but sometimes I'm just caught off guard and instantly forget their names, but I'm not too embarrassed to ask again if I think I'll run into this person again.

henryaj2• 13 years ago

Hey, this doesn't work in the UK, despite being on the UK iTunes Store - it won't accept a UK phone number (it's too many digits).

tomasien22• 13 years ago

OH hey I did absolutely not think of that. International numbers are 11 digits is that right? Or what is it?

gbl08ma• 13 years ago

Depends on the country. But really, why do you need to know? Just set a high limit, like 20 or 30 digits.

Show HN: I suck at remembering names, so I built an app to help

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